I was halfway through listening to Camila Moreno's "Incendie" when I wondered if there would ever be an end to the creative ways Latin Alternative artists explore music. How many ways can you rework four simple beats — or six beats in Afro-Cuban and Afro-Peruvian music — into something that stops listeners in their tracks?

This week, the young band Making Movies (and its producer, Steve Berlin of Los Lobos) shows us how deeply thought-out lyrics sound next to a rhythm track that somehow both propels and floats without violating the laws of physics.

Being a child of the 1970s, I was struck by how the Washington, D.C., band Empresarios masters '70s funk. It doesn't necessarily do anything new with the form, but its members dig deep within themselves to discover a personal connection to a groove that, for many of us, has never stopped. And don't get me started on that mad scientist of a musician, Argentina's Mati Zundel, who runs Brazilian music through a filter of cumbia.